Three vaults sealed off and boxes examined· Directors arrested on suspicion of laundering

The Yorkshire-based property millionaire stepped out of his Mayfair house onWednesday morning and strolled down Park Lane to pick up some petty cash.

Normally the procedure would be simple, if highly security-conscious. A fewmonths ago he rented a safe deposit box at a business tucked away in a side street behind the Grosvenor House and Dorchester hotels. The service cost just over £300 a year. The box was little bigger than a laptop and inside was £40,000. He had provided ID, proof of his address and a palm recognition print for a hand-reading machine. In return he got two keys, two numbered codes and a swipe card that would finally give him access through the steel doors to "cages" where the boxes were stored.

But when he turned the corner into Park Street he found a police crime scenetape and an officer carrying a Heckler & Koch machine gun. Park Lane Safe Deposit Ltd was off limits. The raid that closed it down — and two others in Hampstead and Edgware owned by the same people — had been planned for eight months with 300 officers, sniffer dogs and enough firepower to start a small war. The Metropolitan police's assistant commissioner John Yates said it was an "unprecedented operation". Each of the 7,000 boxes would be treated as a potential crime scene. Suspected offences involved ran the gamut of organised crime: drugs, human trafficking, prostitution, fraud, firearms and money laundering. Many of the boxes may have been rented with false identities.

Forty-eight hours after the police went in, they revealed some of their findings: £14m in cash, a firearm, counterfeit currency, passports, chequebooks and credit cards, a substantial amount of high valuejewellery and four paintings — three landscapes and still lives in the 17th century Dutch style and a 20th century Russian portrait. At the Hampstead centre, an Edwardian redbrick mansion block on Finchley Road, two police trucks were filled with crates yesterday. Police believe the total value will be in tens of millions.

It doesn't take an inspector Poirot to work out that safe deposit centres mightbe an ideal place to hide the proceeds of crime. Traditionally no questionshave been asked and ID was not always required. It has even been possible to rent a walk-in room for larger items — the odd Gainsborough, perhaps, or suitcases of swag. There was no regulatory framework until December last year when the 2007 money laundering regulations brought safe deposit businesses under supervision of the Financial Services Authority. Like banks, owners would have to "know their customer" and report any suspicious activity. The 10 safe deposit companies in London — and the two in Manchester and Birmingham — are required to register with the FSA by June 15. At the time of the raids a search of the register showed no results for the parent company of the three vaults, Safe Deposit Centres Ltd. The FSA said an application could be pending.

Detectives have stressed that their main targets are criminals who may haveused the centres for proceeds of crime. But they also arrested three directors of the safe deposit firm on suspicion of money laundering. By Thursday morning Milton Woolf, 52, Jacqueline Swann, 44, and Leslie Sieff, 60, were released on police bail, to return early in September. Company records show that the business was set up as Hampstead Safe Deposit Vaults in 1983by Sieff, an accountant from Port Elizabeth in South Africa who became a British citizen. With his wife Jill he also runs the Hampstead School of English in the same mansion block as the vaults. Sieff was joined in the business by Milton Woolf, 52, another South African expatriate.

Although hundreds of innocent box owners have been calling the special police centre to claim their belongings, others may be trying to cover their tracks.

After the prolific Italian robber Valerio Viccei raided the Knightsbridge safedeposit centre in 1987, around 30 of more than 120 owners never came forward.

"I'm sure they have all got a story to tell," said the detective in charge of the case. The raids of 2008 will undoubtedly reveal many more.

Art Hostage comments:

Would it be too much to ask that one of the Landscape's found is the stolen Flink from the Gardner Museum, in a box registered to Jean Marie Messier ???

Unfortunately, I think these three are Still Life paintings, with a bit of landscape in the background and may not be stolen, but housed for security.

Could be wrong and there is still hope of other stolen artworks being discovered in the remaining deposit boxes yet to be opened.

Seems to be a "Lull before the Storm" in the Gardner art recovery efforts, if you excuse the pun.

Things are being considered and decisions may be imminent.

Was also hoping the Newby Table may have been housed in one of the Walk-in size deposit boxes.

Maybe some good news for Graff's, their stolen diamonds are in there somewhere.

Amongst this current cluster of high value stolen art recoveries, the Gardner art still remains elusive, hope springs eternal !!!

Update:

Apparently, security agencies such as the C.I.A., MI5/6 and others have also been using these deposit centres to stash slush fund money amongst other things.

Also there is rumoured to be certain govt documents stashed by potential whistle blowers and tapes of Govt ministers being compromised.

If the Police are allowed to, then expect some sensational headlines over the coming months relating to things other than Organised crime, political intrigue of the highest nature.

Stolen Gardner art in London Deposit box centre raid, what was I Flinking !!